Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/165

Rh Later on it was A. P. Ostrovsky, the glory of Russian dramatic literature, who translated Shakespeare, also the noted Russian philologist, P. A. Kozlov, and the dramatist Gnedich. Together with the number of translations grew the body of interpretative literature. The most enthusiastic interpreter of Shakespeare was the first Russian literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky.

"Only Shakespeare," wrote he, "the divine, the great, the inaccessible, has comprehended Hell, and Earth, and Heaven. Nature's king, he levied an equal tribute on the good and the evil; and inspired seer, he spied out the throbbing pulse of the universe. Every drama of his is the world in miniature. A new Proteus, he was able to endow dead reality with a living soul. A profound analyser, he was able to find the clue to the solution of the highest psychological problems of man's moral nature, in what appears the most insignificant circumstances of his life and will. Never does he have recourse to springs or props in the arrangement of his dramatic action. The actions of his dramas unfold freely, naturally, from their own essence, according to the immutable laws of necessity." It is the opinion of all those who write about Shakespeare in Russia that Belinsky has seized most deeply upon the beauty and the grandeur of Shakespeare, despite the fact that he had only a piecemeal acquaintance with the work of the great dramatist.

Among Shakespeare's works the most popular and the best loved in Russia are Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet. To these works a great body of critical literature has been devoted, a large share of it, to Hamlet.

It was Hamlet that won the deepest sympathy of the Russians. His passivity, his constant reflection, his everlasting pensiveness,—are these not typically Russian traits? We can almost say that in Russia alone Hamlet is sincerely loved and deeply understood. The critic I have already quoted, Vissarion Belinsky, characterizes Shakespeare's Prince of Denmark in the following way: "Hamlet's nature is purely inward, contemplative, subjective, born for feeling and thought. But circumstances demand from him action, instead of feeling and thought; they call him from the ideal into the practical world, into the world of action. Naturally, this situation gives rise to a terrible struggle in Hamlet, to an inward conflict, which forms the very essence of the whole drama. Hamlet is a strong personality by nature. His caustic irony, his sudden fits of anger, his passionate sallies in the conversation with his mother, the proud contempt and open hatred he shows to his uncle,—all this bears